


i think it's time you burn me down

by gayxiaolong



Series: what we were [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: (aka mentions of both of their childhoods), (fria didn't die in the fight - penny didn't get the powers - salem didn't land on atlas yet), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Atlas Academy (RWBY), F/F, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Non-Linear Narrative, Spoilers: Volume 7 (RWBY), in which cinder and winter knew each other from the academy and neither are over it, in which cinder wants to hurt, no happy ending what did you expect with these two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29277543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayxiaolong/pseuds/gayxiaolong
Summary: Cinder doesn’t know what to say. All the reasons, all the words she’d never let herself speak, would burn out in the cold air around them-I knew it would hurt; I wanted to burn; I didn’t know what else to do; My thoughts always fall back to you.***or, In pain, cast out by Salem, Cinder finds her way back to Winter.
Relationships: Cinder Fall/Winter Schnee
Series: what we were [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2150073
Comments: 14
Kudos: 32





	i think it's time you burn me down

**Author's Note:**

> (title from Smoke by PVRIS) 
> 
> this fic is what happens when your friend says "nono i need them to have a happy ending" about your snowfall fic and then you decide to write a second ending that still isn't happy (sorry chel <3)
> 
> ***trigger warning for mentions of abuse and some self-destructive ideation***

_You failed._

Cinder looks down at the city of Atlas, cold and distant from where she flies. That’s something that doesn’t change up close- the buildings never stop looming, the heaters do nothing to stop the chill. 

At ten, she stared with wide eyes at the gilded hotel building that kept none of it’s promised dreams- a glimpse of a future tarnished and unfulfilled. If she walked that street today, she’d feel just as small. The city towers above everyone, glitzy and built to impose visions of lives that were never hers to live.

_You failed to recover the winter maiden’s powers._

There’s nothing for her here. 

There’s no life to return to- at least not one worth revisiting. She flies over Atlas Academy, its grand buildings and packed commons, and feels nothing but contempt. Another future promised, undelivered, lays within the halls. There’s a version of her, she knows, that lived out that future. There’s a Cinder who let anger drive her to something other than destruction. 

_You’re of no use to me anymore._

There’s so much tied here, a history she killed and buried along with every memory she doesn’t let herself return to- the blood on her clothes, the hand in her hair, her bare feet against the snow as she wept and ran. She remembers the panic that followed her for years, the torturous way her brain picks all her actions apart.

It wasn’t guilt - she did what she had to do - but the weight consumed her anyway. She chose to forget, chose to move on, chose to let her fire burn on while the pain she endured is embedded in the frost of Atlas. 

She killed another future just as much, one full of dorm rooms, icy blue eyes, and the dreams unrealized. The future she wanted the most is buried with the ones she didn’t. 

_Without you I am nothing._

She can’t take back any of it, can’t return to something she was before, even if she wanted to. She can, though, return to _someone_. Directionless, without a plan, Cinder is guided by familiarity, heartbreak, the memories of a person she knows no longer exists. She can’t undo anything. But she can find Winter.

Snowflakes land on her skin when she lands on the roof, vanishing instantly from the heat that runs through her. It’s just another delicate thing destroyed under her touch, another way her existence is defined by what she can break, the pain she can wreak. 

_Then you shall return to nothing._

Atlas Military facilities should _really_ be more difficult to break into. Even with her grimm arm feeling weaker by the second, she finds her way into Winter’s room. When Winter returns from her duties, she’s sitting on the windowsill clutching her twitching arm in her hand.

“Aww, you left the light on for me,” Cinder says. Her voice is broken, words falling short of the teasing intended. She looks up to meet her eyes across the room, but her gaze doesn’t make it that far- her eyes are fixed on the new additions to Winter’s uniform, the braces that hold together what Cinder tore apart. 

***

_Even months after arriving, Cinder walks the halls of Atlas Academy like a ghost, still not fully comprehending why she’s here at all. The huntress exam seemed like the only option, a future she planned for when she had no other concept of a future to lean on. She fought, she trained, she spent every free second thinking about what life would be like as a huntress. After she freed herself, after she left her past behind her, it was hard to work towards any other path._

_She passed the exam with the second highest score of her year- second only to a Schnee. The name left a bitter taste in her mouth at the time, a legacy associated with luxury and wealth and all the things Cinder never had._

_That thought didn’t last long after she met her. Winter, she realized, is a girl escaping her legacy- not relying on it. The first week of classes, Cinder got close enough to recognize the signs. Winter was hurting, sealing her emotions in frozen vaults._

_After a while, though, Cinder gets to see more. They meet on the roof of their dorm, a spot they found to practice sparring that became more overnight. It’s a spot nobody can take from them- high enough to ignore their pasts, what Ironwood wants for their futures, what they might want instead. It’s high enough to give an excuse to the dizzy feeling Cinder gets every time they’re close._

_Laying on the roof- looking at the few stars they can find between all the light pollution from Atlas’ extravagance- Winter opens up._

_“I don’t know how much longer I can do it,” she says, slowly, her words making their way through the frost._

_Cinder turns her head to the side, finding the deepest blue staring back at her. There’s fear in her eyes, a crinkle in Winter’s dark eyebrows that offsets the put-together image she always presents. She can’t focus on her words, on how upset Winter clearly is, with their faces so close together. It’s intoxicating, chilling, being so close she can feel her breath through the winter air. Winter must think the same- she turns back to the stars just as Cinder finds the ability to breathe again._

_“How long you can do what?” Cinder says with a crack in her voice that she hates herself for. She’s supposed to be confident, to be the one who doesn’t falter, not the one that’s too weak around her to even speak up. Her head feels fuzzy, edges of her thoughts blurring from the lack of distance between them. You’re being stupid, she tells herself, you’ve been this close before._

_Winter moves to sit up, hugging her knees. Everything about her seems off. She’s folded in on herself, showing none of the posture and elegance she always puts on. Parts of her hair are falling out of the bun that she spends too much effort on every day, tousled from laying down beside her. Her fingers pick nervously at the sleeves of her uniform. Even without seeing her face - and luckily without the distraction that brings - Cinder knows she’s more upset than she’s ever seen her- or, at least, that Winter has shown her._

_“I’ve been talking to Ironwood a lot,” Winter starts. Her words feel weighted, low, like she dropped all of her act alongside her posture. It’s not entirely news to Cinder. Winter’s always been the special one, regardless of how hard Cinder works. Ironwood told her she had potential from the start, her entrance exam itself being enough for him to know. Now, months into their term, he’s been watching. He sits in on sparring classes, assigns Winter’s team to missions meant for upperclassmen, and, apparently, calls her for meetings. A broken voice continues, “He thinks I could be a Specialist one day. If… If I wanted to be.”_

_“Is he really giving you much of a choice?” Cinder finds the words, the anger towards him that she’s used to. Winter laughs, but it comes out as more of a defeated sigh than anything._

_“And then there’s my Father,” she says, head falling to rest on her knees. She stays there for a while, not sure how to talk about it. Everytime he comes up, there’s a recognizable shift in her tone. Cinder knows where it comes from, the pain she must have endured. Her hand comes to her neck instinctively, tracing over the scar she still hasn’t shown Winter._

_“Hey,” she places a hand on Winter’s shoulder, a touch that should not bring a blush to her face but lights her on fire regardless. Winter turns her head until their eyes meet, softening as soon as she takes Cinder in. There are tears in her eyes, held back only by her determination to not break down. “You don’t owe him anything.”_

_Winter moves to lay down again, head against Cinder’s shoulder. She tries not to gasp at the contact, the way it rushes to her head immediately. “Yeah,” Winter replies, “I guess I don’t.”_

_After that night, they don’t talk about the tears that fall, or how they shift to lay closer when Winter can smile again, and definitely not how they nearly fall asleep on the roof that night- comfortable in silent dreams shared between them._

_There’s so much that Winter keeps frozen deep, a pain that she carries that she’s so convinced she has to bear alone. Foolishly, Cinder always hoped she would be the flame- that Winter could find home in her fireside._

***

Cinder takes in her white hair and the bright blue eyes staring at her, even if they contain hostility instead of the childlike hope they used to. _She’s beautiful_ , she thinks, the words forming the way they never fully could at the Academy. It’s almost too much to take in- the intensity of her stare, how being near her still makes her heart beat out of time, how much that infuriates her. In all her runaways, all her escapes, she’s never wanted to run towards and away at once. 

“I don’t have the powers,” Winter breathes out, heavy and coated in an emotion she can’t place. “Killing me won’t get you anywhere.”

Cinder pushes herself to standing and watches as the woman in front of her stands to attention. When she reaches for her sword, Winter’s hand shakes- not able to fully clasp her hand around the hilt. She looks tired, weak, in a way Cinder’s never seen before. Even after long nights at the Academy library together, or the exhausted collapse she’d fall into Cinder’s dorm bed with after training, Cinder has never seen her look so burnt out. _This is all your doing_ , Cinder remembers, _this is a pain you caused._

“That’s not why I’m here,” she spits, unable to shake the venom that everything is laced with now. The guilt funnels to anger, too, it seems. Even at her lowest, even showing up at her door as a last resort, Cinder can’t say anything without the fire lighting her sentiments ablaze.

“Then why _are_ you here?” Winter asks, more defeated than Cinder has ever heard her, “Why did you come back?”

Cinder doesn’t know what to say. All the reasons, all the words she’d never let herself speak, would burn out in the cold air around them- _I knew it would hurt; I wanted to burn; I didn’t know what else to do; My thoughts always fall back to you._

Wordlessly, she kneels, hanging her head. It’s not obedience, it doesn’t come with the admission of inferiority that comes with kneeling before Salem. It’s a defeat, a transfer of power- entrusting Winter with her demise.

Winter could kill her, arrest her and call for her execution. Or she could do it herself, hands around her throat as she stares her down- letting the last sight Cinder sees be of the frosted blue that still coats her dreams. Cinder expects all of it just as fervently as she expects none of it. She knows Winter could just as easily cast her out again. Guards could rush in again. Cinder would give up this time, let herself lose the possibility of seeing her again. She’d be alone again, and maybe that’s what she deserved all along.

Whatever path is decided, it’s in Winter’s hands now. She has the agency in her destruction. Winter could unravel her wholly, end to end- devour her in all the ways that would hurt, all the ways she would love. The world could come apart under her hands. Cinder would let it.

She watches the floor as Winter’s shadow moves closer, boots taking measured footsteps towards her. Part of her, even as far removed from her childhood as she is, expects a shock.

Winter grabs the fabric of her cape and lifts her up, pushing until her back hits the wall with a grunt. Winter’s expression is colored in curiosity, like she isn’t sure why Cinder doesn’t fight back. In an instant, Winter’s sword comes to rest against her neck.

“I could call the guards,” Winter says with an anger that doesn’t reach her eyes. Cinder wishes it did.

“Do it,” Cinder says, missing all the tone of banter that would normally fit between them.

“I could kill you myself,” Winter’s voice drops lower, which would be much more intimidating if the hand holding her sword weren’t shaking from her injuries. 

“You could.” _Destroy me, break me, ruin me._

Cinder winces in pain again, her arm stinging as it shakes. She can almost feel it creeping across her collarbone, as slow as it is. Winter’s expression drops, anger freezing over by concern. 

Winter’s eyes trace her body up and down, finally taking her in. Her eyes widen at the damage, at all she didn’t notice until now- Cinder’s arm is still twitching, the grotesque flesh looking more deformed by the minute. Her glass mask had been ripped from her eye, the scar that Winter hasn’t seen in full peeking from under her hair. Worst of all, her left thigh has scratches running up it, blood dripping from where her claws sank in reaction to the pain. 

“You’re hurt,” She says, and there’s far too much care in it. Cinder wishes she could hide it, could go back and burrow herself in the pain Winter may have inflicted. 

“So are you.”

“Well whose fault is that?” Winter jokes. It’s said with a sad smile, one that Cinder’s too familiar with.

Winter drops her sword, blue eyes searching Cinder for some way forward. The metal clattering against the tile floor doesn’t stir either of them.

A tension stretches between them- rooted deeply in separation and scars and all the nights they never let themselves remember. Their almost-kisses on the rooftop, the nights they couldn’t fall asleep unless they were intertwined in one of their dorm beds, the what-ifs that haunted both of them- all their history put them here, regardless of how they bury it. The one thing Cinder couldn’t run from. The one person she wanted to run towards. 

“Was I really that bad?” Cinder whispers, inches from her lips. There’s a heat there, enough to warm but not burn, as much as Cinder wishes it would. 

“You impaled my sister, almost killed Penny, blew up a medical facility, and put me in this brace,” Winter laughs, and some part of it almost feels like it used to.

“I meant before.” 

***

_It’s a friendship that shouldn’t work. That was clear from the start. The first time they talked - sparring in a classroom in front of the onlooking crowd of students - there was a spark neither of them could name that neither of them wanted to read into._

_After so long by her side, now, they’re closer than anyone thought they could be. Neither of them have ever had someone to lean on this much, their bond with each other is more than any of their actual teammates. There’s power in her smile, a future embedded in her skin with every touch._

_Their friendship shouldn’t work, but it does. That’s why it hurts so much._

_Ironwood’s office is kept too cold. The chill would make her shiver if she wasn’t too proud to show how she’s affected. Her heart beats so loud she can hear it, but no part of her wants Ironwood to know how scared she is. She tunes out most of their conversation, ignoring everything he says until she comes up._

_“I have a plan for her,” he says, sinister and looming despite the lack of emotion in his tone, “and you’re getting in the way of that.”_

_She knows what he means, of course. Winter spends far more time with her than her own team. Despite both their grades - Winter is lined up to be valedictorian if she keeps it up - and Winter’s good behaviors, Ironwood probably isn’t happy with the rest. He’s probably furious at how they’re inseparable, how the first thing they do when they return from missions is see each other, how Cinder has made her less uptight (though she still hangs onto a lot of it)._

_She expected him to reprimand her, again, for her friendship with Winter. She expected him to give some speech, again, about responsibility or being a bad influence. She expected to be reminded, again, about how he views her as inferior despite her working just as hard as Winter._

_What she doesn’t expect is him to tap his scroll. A picture is projected from it, one that she would go the rest of her life without seeing again if she could help it. In front of her, taunting her, is the hotel she’s tried to forget about. She can somehow still feel its towering pillars and golden windows swallowing her whole, even just in an image._

_She gasps, sobs- any ability she had of keeping her composure was lost the moment she saw the place that brought her so much pain. The place - the memories - she thought she killed alongside her abusers. The General just stares, cold and empty, straight at her. It’s a threat, she knows, an unspoken but menacing ‘I know.’ written in his expression._

_The rest is a blur- her run to Winter’s dorm, the way she curled up on her bed in tears, the way Winter begged her to slow down and explain. It all fits in her memories as disjointed, fuzzy._

_What stays in her mind is the end._

_“...You want to stay with them, don’t you?” It comes out as a choke, her voice rising as she realizes what this means. Winter wants to stay. She will always choose Ironwood, a future laid out for her, over a future with her. She will never put herself first- she’s sacrificing her happiness for a destiny she’s being groomed into without a second thought._

_Cinder continues, voice breaking, “These people don’t care about you, Winter. They hoard power, they stand by while people suffer just so they can benefit. They’re exactly like your father, they’re just like all the people who’ve hurt us. Why can’t you see that?”_

_Winter looks to the floor, clearly not knowing what to say. She doesn’t want her, doesn’t want to leave with her. Despite their past, she doesn’t want a future._

_Cinder has always defaulted to destruction, even when that didn’t mean the world would burn. She would yell, she would hurt people, she would push them away. Winter always seemed to self-destruct, Cinder thought. She would cry, she would ache, she would ruin her own chances. Cinder always thought there was a tragedy in that, in a girl so hurt she could only hurt herself in return._

_She should’ve seen it coming, really._

_She sits on the street outside of Atlas Academy for far too long, crying- comforted and ruined by the thought that in another universe, Winter wants her. In another life, they could survive together._

_Cinder thinks of this as a moment of weakness- how she left without a fight, without getting what she wanted. She never wanted to feel that powerless again._

_Salem finds her like this- cold, broken, wanting. Alone. She lifts her up, gives her a future, promises her power._

_Years down the line, when she leaves a chess piece on his desk made of black glass, she hopes it’s as menacing as what she saw on his desk that day. She hopes it makes him fear- that it burns through him just as her life burnt to ashes around her._

***

“I meant before.” Before the scars, before everything Cinder has done, before Winter made it clear she didn’t want her.

Winter’s face falls, the bickering much easier than returning to emotions hidden under frozen walls, buried deep for the both of them. It must be her influence - what Cinder’s done to her - that Winter finds it easier to burn than heal. Cinder watches the words form in Winter’s mind, footsteps in the snow trying not to leave the marks they’re used to. Slowly, small enough to fill the space between them, she starts, “It wasn’t you. Obviously I was wrong,” she sighs, finds Cinder’s eye again, “About Ironwood. About what I chose. I didn’t think I would lose you. But we made our choices.”

Cinder has never heard those words before, her inhale nearly choking her. She’s never had a reason to believe she was anything but the cause of someone’s pain. Out of habit, Cinder searches the words for mention of her inferiority, for an indication that she’s _nothing_. She comes up empty, finding only evidence that Winter felt the same. That she could be _something_. 

Gods, after everything, she does not deserve this. She does not deserve to be this close to her and still be breathing. She does not deserve anything but being tossed aside, unraveled and ruined in all the ways she expected. She doesn’t deserve anything but pain.

Maybe this is pain in it’s own way- the way she watches Winter’s eyes flick down to her lips, the way she stands, breathless, tortured by all the parts of her that wants this- and all the parts of her that know she doesn’t deserve it. 

Uncaring of ‘ _deserving’_ , Winter leans in, pulling Cinder closer until their lips meet. It’s not soft the way she imagined it at the Academy, not gentle the way she cried while imagining after she left- it’s intense, hands in her hair and tears in both their eyes. There’s only so much pain that can be held back before it crashes, only so much _wanting_ that can be left ungranted, only so much frost that can build before it’s thawed. 

It comes with a burning - one that’s still new despite it all. The friction, the weightlessness, the pull of her bottom lip between Winter’s teeth- every sensation smolders through Cinder more than anger ever has. It’s dangerous, the way she’s being held together and torn apart by one touch, one burning- its own kind of unraveling. 

Winter pulls back, clearly feeling the weight of it just as much as she is. She’s panting, lips swollen and red. Cinder is sure she looks the same, despite how much that vulnerability makes her want to run.

Winter wants her, now. Her eyes hold desire- a heat peeking through the ice, a fire burning in bright eyes hotter than Cinder’s used to. 

Cinder watches, disconnected, as her grimm arm reaches to move a lock of white hair out of the way. Seeing Winter in full - the blush creeping up her neck, her blown pupils, her parted lips - is so much to take in. It hits her how familiar it all is, how much the woman in front of her is the same as the girl she fell in love with at Atlas Academy. There should be a dissonance, she thinks. It would make it so much easier- Cinder should be able to look at her without the pang of futures abandoned, without the weight of nights burned into her memory, without feeling rooted in their past while panting at their present. 

Even through all the familiarity, she can’t stop herself from the way her vision focuses on something new. A pink scar, raised and jagged over her nose and onto her cheek, is the thing she can’t tear her eyes away from. Instinctively, she reaches to touch it.

The image is out of place, a monstrous claw tracing soft skin and scar tissue. Winter doesn’t flinch, even with the way the arm twitches, even with the way Cinder’s still wincing from the pain that spreads from her shoulder across her body. 

Winter wants her, now. That’s a truth that she’s better off not acknowledging. It was easier to leave when everything was laced in rejection.

They aren’t back at the Academy- crying in the dorm room, wanting to be closer. Winter isn’t picking her future over theirs. Cinder doesn’t have to run. She isn’t being pushed away. They aren’t back only weeks ago when they fought- when Cinder screamed in pain, when Winter held herself strong before she was broken down again. Winter isn’t scared of her, somehow, despite it all. She doesn’t flinch at her deformed hand on her cheek- the twitching, warm flesh that’s corrupting her inch by inch. 

Winter doesn’t flinch at her touch. She should. 

Winter’s scroll rings, then, a deep voice giving her an order over her comms. Cinder’s still pressed close enough to hear it, but too frozen in place from hearing Ironwood’s voice again to comprehend. Winter snaps to attention, the conditioning too hard to break out of, even now. A whispered _‘Yes, sir’_ falls to the ground between them, empty words given to authority barely disguising her still-heavy breaths. 

When the static comm sound clicks off, Winter takes out her earpiece. 

“I could leave,” she says, and it sounds more like a question. The blue eyes meeting hers are begging for an escape, begging for the same Cinder that screamed ‘ _leave with me’_ all those years ago with tears streaming down her face. Winter doesn’t have the words to ask her to stay, missing the strength to reach out her hand for help. She speaks in measured half-truths, the way she always has, begging for someone to read between her words. Cinder always has, but she doesn’t want to this time.

Cinder shakes her head, afraid of what words would fall from her lips if she spoke. Would her voice quake the way it did on the rooftop- soft words new and scary on her tongue? Would it break the way she did her last day at the academy- manic and heartbroken and pleading for a new future? Or would it light on fire again- find its way back to the venom and pain they’re both used to her living in now? She isn’t sure what would be worse, which words would come out that she can’t swallow again. Whether she hurt her or loved her, either is too much to bear.

Winter backs up, then, either understanding her fear or choosing to ignore her own desires. Knowing Winter, it’s the second. 

“Then you need to go,” and it’s said softer than any words should be directed at her anymore. Cinder wishes it burned, wishes it was punctuated with the blaring sirens and booming footsteps of their last meeting’s end. She leaves, again, as she always does, but with a goodbye instead of a shove. The pain would be easier than whatever she’s feeling now, she thinks. 

At the window, she pauses with a hand on the frame, bracing herself. This time, she lets herself turn back. She lets herself take Winter in again- the warmth of her skin in the soft light, the softness in her eyes that shouldn’t be directed at her, the parts of her that are so _beautiful,_ with the language to think that now. She catalogues her in her divinity, letting her image in soft rays of light make an impression deeper than the pain.

“I hope you do leave, though, Winter,” she says, barely above a whisper. Even if it’s not for her, she should get out. She should learn what it’s like to run, she should find happiness that Cinder could never give her. With none of those words left to say, she leaves her with the only truth that she holds tight in her chest, “You don’t deserve this.”

She turns away as Winter’s expression is colored in dazed surprise. That should say it all, the way any words not meant to burn register as a shock. It doesn’t matter that she means it, it doesn’t matter that she wants to turn around, that she _wants_ \- beyond power and destruction, a desire colored in a different kind of heat. She locked this future in long ago- any version of her that gets to be happy should be left in the cold with every other version she’s killed.

As she flies away, she turns back to see Winter propping her window open despite the cold- an option left open, a future presented that’s coated in something other than destruction. 

If she deserved it, she could turn around. If she deserved it, she could go back through the window. If she deserved her, she could accept a future Atlas promised, for once.

She leaves- again. She hurt her- again. She’s alone- again. 

She returns to nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading !! let me know what you think- comments make me extremely happy !!
> 
> you can find me on twitter @gayxiaolong as well <3


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